new business idea. From that day he never carried another afternoon route. He sublet the job and established himself on a Jefferson Avenue corner.
To maintain himself here, he had: sometimes to fight. In business matters his brain was keen. His temper was quick as a flash. His fists were quicker. And yet he was no brawler—no bulldozer. He was fair—fair to the smaller boys, whereat they rallied around him and bought their papers through him. He gave them their rights, but he fought tenaciously against the older fellows for his rights. Presently he had a little stand from behind which he handled his papers. The stand enlarged. He added a few magazines, and then a few more. The stand became a hole in the wall, and he added a whole line of magazines.
Then one day George tried an experiment. He employed a broken-down Civil War veteran, ambitionless but faithful and honest, to keep the stand open all day while the boy was himself in school. This was an enlarging glimpse of that idea which had come to him when he farmed out his afternoon paper route. While he studied, an old man and a six-foot wooden shelf with a two-dollar cotton awning over it made him as much money as he had made in the three after-school hours in which he had been accustomed to prosecute his business so energetically, and
